3 ms·
>>> As of September 2021, the Wikimedia endowment stands at >$100 million. >> It seems that this is approximately how much they spend each year and have ~500 s
by tablespoon 5y ago
>>> As of September 2021, the Wikimedia endowment stands at >$100 million.
>> It seems that this is approximately how much they spend each year and have ~500 staff.
> It's one of the most visited site on the planet, and people are constantly writting on it. It's on the same scale of facebook, youtube or twitter, activity wise.
How much of that money and staff goes to actually running the site and maintaining the software? IIRC (and correct me if I'm wrong), a large fraction actually goes to other efforts.
- loeg 5y agoBetween 2005 and 2015-2016, page views grew by ~11x, articles by ~12x, hosting expenses ~33x, and total WMF spending grew by 1250x.
- MagnumOpus 5y agoHosting and actual sysop expense is quite limited. I think 15ish years ago when Brion Vibber started to do it full time, he ran the whole Wikimedia operation pretty much on his own, with an annual spend of low six digits (and that included his salary, hardware, hosting, the whole shebang). Spending $100m a year on dev work, conferences, grants, D&I staff etc is a luxury, the site could be kept running for less than 1% of the cost (and dozens of big companies would do it for free just for the PR benefits). Maybe the only other function apart from hosting/sysop that is essential to WMF's operation are the lawyers that prevent it from being shutdown in entire countries by lawsuit-happy individuals.
- Pokepokalypse 5y agoWell, the lawyer factor is probably most important. A lot of people are willing to spend big money to shut down truth.